After Claude (11 page)

“That’s right, you’re a stewardess, aren’t you?”

“Airline hostess,” she corrected me. My, my, who would have thought we’d hit it off so well?

“Gee whiz, it must be hard work, waitressing up there with everyone throwing up and crashing and everything.”

“Harriet!” I heard a distant masculine command.

“There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask a stewardess, I hope you won’t mind my asking you, but you’re the first stewardess that I’ve met socially. Maybe I’ve flown with you, even been served by you, but who looks that closely at the Rockettes? Tell me, do you believe that stewardesses and nurses are pathologically promiscuous as a result of their occupations constantly confronting them with death?”

I have an uncanny knack for drawing out new acquaintances by making them feel importantly informed.

“Well, I really don’t know.” She played with her smoked salmon. “Next time you land in a hospital, why don’t you ask one of your nurses?”

How the French pigs laughed at her witticism.

“Last week,” she droned on, rotten with power, “Charlton Heston was on Flight 602 to Rome with a private nurse.”

“I bet you meet lots of famous people,” Claude said, admiring her, as you might admire Mrs. Martin Luther King.

“Gangs,” she agreed. “Once I had Dr. De Bakey on Flight 809, coming out of Dallas. It made me shudder to look at him. I think transplants are so against human nature, like a dreadful science-fiction movie come true, and all the terrible questions about whether the person is legally or physically dead. I don’t approve of it,” the blonde philosopher declared.

I recall strongly advocating transplants. “The heart is a machine, a pump, a mindless, soulless, gutless pump. What difference does it make whose pump is pumping you? Do you really give a damn what pumps you, Barbara?”

I held Claude’s eyes in snakelike communion.

Charles came out of his nod. “The smoked salmon is atrociously salty.”

“I had Edward G. Robinson on Flight 706, out of Africa, immediately after his heart attack,” said the heart authority, “and I know, from the way he spoke and acted, that he didn’t want any heart but the one he was born with.”

“Where are you from originally? You have such a charming accent.” My lover steadied his head by cupping it in his hand.

“You won’t have heard of it. Webland, Nebraska,” she said, with the hideous vanity of hicks.

“That’s silly, of course Claude’s heard of Nebraska, haven’t you, sweetheart?”

Baba did an imitation of Claude, cupping her chin in her palm and giving me her undivided attention.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Barbra Streisand?”

“No.”

“I once had her on Flight 47, coming out of Vegas, and really, you’re the spitting image.”

“I’m a foot taller than she is, and my nose is a foot shorter.”

“Not so much her actual looks…”

“I’m not Jewish, if that’s what you’re insinuating. But Lauren Bacall, Rex Harrison, Piper Laurie, Claudette Colbert, Natalie Wood, Charles Boyer, Tony Curtis, Dinah Shore, Sammy Davis, Paulette Goddard, Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey are.” I had a list of Jews as long as your arm.

“Not Rex Harrison,” she wailed. The rest I was welcome to.

“I had him on Flight 912, coming out of Heathrow, and he bought champagne for all of us.”

“Tough, honey, that was Jewish champagne you guzzled.”

A waiter came over and whispered something to Claude. He communicated a message to me, about lowering my voice.

“Is this a reform school or a lousy restaurant?” I was far too entranced with my new friend to worry about my public image.

Charles awoke from another refreshing cat nap and decided to break in on our intensely exciting meeting. “Have you ever been in an accident or a near accident?”

“Only once. It was terrible. Omar Sharif was on the flight. He was returning from a bridge tournament. It was rather thrilling, the way he kept chanting Moslem prayers. But I’ve decided, it’s ridiculous to be scared of crashing. You can’t go through life afraid of the unforeseeable. If your number is up, you go, even if you’re sitting home watching television.”

It was astonishing the amount of knowledge packed into that frozen blonde head.

“That’s easy for you to say, but when you’ve lost both your parents in a plane crash, you’ll sing another tune.”

I poured the rest of the wine, dregs and all, into my empty glass.

Baba shriveled up in her chair. I hoped that Claude had noticed the transformation. Take her out of those fancy white pleats, get her into a hoover apron, and she’d scream Appalachia.

“Harriet, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about character, and compassion, and commitment. I’m talking about frigid blonde whores…”

I suddenly found myself seated on the floor, surrounded by concerned faces peering down at me.

“Get her coffee. Maybe if she had black coffee? Last month Stewart Granger got bombed on Flight 804, coming out of London, and we sobered him up in no time.”

“I’m not Stewart Granger, I’m not bombed, I simply fell off the chair. I lost my balance. If it can happen to the Flying Wallendas, it can happen to me. No one accused them of being drunk. I’m sick and tired of your filthy lies.”

“Get her up, can you lift her up? You take one arm, I’ll take the other.”

A waiter rushed over to throw a tablecloth over my corpse. “Can I help?” he breathlessly asked.

“This is a family affair, sir. My mother here and my father and brother are trying to cheat me out of my inheritance by signing me into a so-called nursing home that has a cemetery camouflaged as a baseball field.”

I fainted when I realized I couldn’t walk or stand. My poor crippled legs.

I came to in the back of Charles’s Mercedes. The outrageous dyke had my head in her lap and was pawing me.

I sat up. “So it’s me you were after, sly pussy.” I tried to kiss her on the lips and ended up sucking on hair spray. “Ugh, Miss Black Sheep, I have something to put in your suggestion box.”

I came to for the second time, feeling precisely like Mrs. Skeffington when she regains consciousness and is informed that due to a bad bout of scarlet fever, she’s gone bald. It felt as though I didn’t have any skin, or whatever it is that keeps the body in such a tidy package. I was a puddle, a carcass decaying in a black room, in a soundless room. It occurred to me that I was dead and buried, and waiting at last to confront Super Creep. I pushed against the lid of the coffin, and my hand met no resistance. Only dark, thin air, so I considered the possibility that I was in my bed, in which case why was I alone, and just where was my paramour?

“Claude,” I whispered, patting the sheets and pillows, “Claude, where are you?” Unless he had magically transformed himself into a book of matches stuck to my ass, he was definitely not in the bed. I sat up, and the earth jolted on its axis. When my feet touched the floor, the quake began. Clearly, I had to get out of the room before the ceiling collapsed. I struggled with the doorknob and broke out of the bedroom, dizzy from the effort. I leaned against the wall, caught my breath, and perceived in the distance the welcome glow of a faint light. Like any lost animal, I headed for the light. Imagine my relief to discover that I was not alone. There in the comforting halo of light was a strange misshapen beast. The sole survivors of earthquakes can’t exactly pick their company. I crawled closer to the fantastic mound, which I knew was alive because I could hear it breathing. You will never guess what I found in the cesspool of light. There, stretched helplessly on his back, was Claude, and seated on his flat lap, pinning him in an unbreakable hold, was none other than sister Baba.

She was stuck to him, bobbing up and down like a coconut drifting on choppy waters. As I got closer, I could actually hear a sucking, slapping sound. If you closed your eyes and blew out your brains, you could imagine that you were in a boat and the sound was made by a gentle sea lapping against the side of the vessel. But then, unless some unfortunate passenger was drowning, how could you ignore a moaning, groaning repetitive wail? You could say it was the wind or a distant motor. I couldn’t.

I strained my open eyes, and a curious phenomenon occurred. The room turned red. I saw a red lamp on the red floor draped with a red scarf. I saw the silhouette of a red couch and a red coffee table. I saw Claude’s busy red hands rubbing Baba’s naked red behind, his legs, her thighs, his chest, her breasts, red, everything red, as though the world had been dipped in blood.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she called in a monotone, and hearing a human voice snapped me out of my hallucination. Instantly the bloody vision cleared, and there was my gray boy friend Claude being raped by a gray celebrity service called Baba.

Before I could leap on her, slash her throat, and rescue Claude, their movements became convulsive, their groans united, and she collapsed against his heaving chest.

I waited, to be sure that she did not intend to cause further harm, before pulling the scarf off the lamp.

“Oh, God,” Claude gasped, as if he had given up hope that help would arrive. He held her head under his chin. Baba turned her morgue shot to me and emitted a short, stifled scream. Caught red-handed in her criminal act, the rapist registered terror. Blue mascara was smudged over her depraved face, and her damp shiksa hair had died of lacquer poisoning.

“Get dressed.” Claude helped his assailant to her feet. She had a boy-girl body. Legs that went straight into slim hips, a small curved behind, and surprisingly full, long-nippled tits.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry. It just happened.”

“Shall I call the police?” I asked Claude. “Or should I finish her off?”

“Okay, take it easy,” he said to me.

“Did she hurt you, Claude? Are you all right?”

“Don’t go near her, Harriet, or I swear, I’ll knock you down. Are you ready?” he asked her. They were both moving like two comedians in a speeded-up silent film. Claude was into his shirt and pants with Clark Kent dispatch, and Baba literally fell into her white regulations. They showed the wear and tear of a very busy night molesting patients in the ward.

She was shaking from satiation.

“Here,” Claude said and handed her a small mountain of chains that she had previously worn around her neck and waist. So that was the weapon used on the poor rat.

She clutched the chains and stood at the door. Claude opened the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I shouted.

“I’ll take you home.” He shielded her, holding her by the shoulders and guiding her out of the apartment.

I might have run after them, but I just managed to get to safety and throw up my guts. My insides were convulsed with dry, heaving sobs, and my face was burning. I couldn’t catch my breath, and my legs were turning into bananas for a change. It was all I could do to arrange for my dead body to be found decently in a bed, not draped around the bathroom fixtures.

I
WOKE
up feeling so bad that turning my head to read Claude’s digital-clock radio remains one of my memorable achievements. It was two thirty, and the room was saturated with the gloomy light of a rainy afternoon. I just lay on that bed, pitying Claude, because the idea of being bodily molested was too grim to wish even on him. I knew in my bones that Claude wasn’t back. The reason I knew was that I was freezing, which suggested that the air conditioner had been in action all night.

I didn’t have the strength to mess around with the TV set. Anyway, if they aren’t burying some murdered dignitary, Saturday afternoon is the absolute bottom of the barrel. I didn’t think about Claude’s treachery or my suspicion that the child abuser had spent the night with Baba. When your physical system is as ravaged as mine was, everything except the necessity of breathing becomes a detail. All that concerned me was how to get to the air conditioner and turn it off before I was frozen solid. Forget it. The numbness, the drowsiness, the inability to rouse oneself, so movingly described in the diaries of Arctic cadavers, overtook me. I surrendered to the sweet embrace of eternal sleep.

When I came out of that stupor, my face was turned in the right direction, so it was without effort that I saw it had become six o’clock. The chill in the apartment was now unbearable. Leave it to the rat to arrange my destruction by the method I myself had frequently requested. Where was he?

I switched on the TV, and there before a map stood a madman doing a doctrinal dissertation on the fact that it was raining. It was easy to leave him to his ranting, and I made it to the living room, fell on the air conditioner, and turned off the death machine. The lamp on the floor was a hideous reminder of the recent debacle. Where was the. rodent? I appreciated his guilt, but as always, he was complicating the situation. The longer he waited to face the music, the more my divine patience ran out.

I seriously considered dressing and leaving the apartment. Let the rat crawl in shamefacedly and find me gone. That would give him something concrete to worry about. But where in that downpour, and in my weakened condition, was I going to drag myself? Better to have our scene over and done with.

What tone and position should I assume regarding his infantile behavior? I sat down on the couch and lit a Marlboro. I was still dressed in my festive fineries, adding an unbearable note of pathos to the tragedy. Tragedy? Should I treat it as a tragedy? Wasn’t that giving Baba a bit more importance than the amateur home wrecker deserved? I knew, on some intuitive level, why Claude had permitted her to take advantage of him. Of course, he was proving his masculinity to me, which was nonsensical. I was more than willing to have him prove it directly. Hadn’t I tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to deliver that happy piece of information? But go communicate such glad tidings to a man in the throes of sexual insecurity. On second thought, not only would I not leave the apartment, I would graciously act as though nothing had happened. I threw my untouched cigarette into a cup, fighting off the waves of nausea the smoke had provoked.